Fundraising metrics

I've just done a fundraising campaign for my run up Tower 42 next week, and I've used it to do some basic analytics of how reach turns into donations.

My rough estimates, gleaned from bit.ly links and Mailchimp, are that the click rates for this campaign are:

· Mailchimp emails – 7%

· Ordinary emails – 4.9%

· Facebook – 0.3%

· Twitter – 0.25%

Mailchimp is unsurprisingly high – people have opted in to these emails, know me and the emails are well formatted and likely to actually get delivered into people’s inboxes because of Mailchimp’s reputation. Plus I actually tested them.

Ordinary emails I assume to be a bit lower mainly because there are some people in there who won’t have heard from me for a while, and who may have abandoned their email addresses or only check their secondary email occasionally.

The timing of the clicks on Bit.ly indicates that some people who received both a Mailchimp email and a Bit.ly email were prompted into action by the ordinary email, which came a few days later.

Facebook feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, but the figures may be slightly underestimated since I’ve put in a few non-tracked links to the site.

Twitter also looks like a low engagement channel from my colleague Josh’s metrics on the same campaign too. My instinct is that it’s quite hard to get much emotional engagement from a Tweet.

A basic online campaigning guide - Part 5a - Local campaigns

Once you know what to say, what are easy ways to tell your audiences if you are running a local campaign?

1. Email newsletters

Local newspapers are slowly dying, and their quality has been falling for years, while council freesheets tend to be full of uniformly positive propaganda.

This leaves a large gap in the market for local news - both political and non-political. Here's an example of a basic newsletter for residents of the Crofton Park area of Lewisham.

A newsletter once or twice a month will strike the right balance of being fresh, but not too often.

2. Breaking news

Local news is rarely local enough for most people. So if you email people with breaking news, then they are usually very grateful.

Here's a good example that Tom Brake, MP for Carshalton & Wallington, did during the early 2010 snows.

3. Post it to your website

Email newsletters usually translate to good news items on websites, where they will continue to get a trickle of traffic for years afterwards.

4. Tweet the headlines

Tweet the headlines in your email out to your followers over a few days, linking to the email text on your website.

5. Publicise through your Facebook page

As with the Tweets simply split out each story from the email into a series of stories that you release over a few days (or weeks).

Hootsuite is a useful tool that allows you to schedule Tweets and Facebook updates simultaneously, so you can set up several weeks of tweeting and Facebook in one go.

6. Email supporters of a specific campaign

Quite a lot of people will only want updates on specific local campaigns you are running, but will happily receive an email newsletter than contains these updates. This can be a good way to encourage them to convert from being a supporter on a specific local issue to receiving your general email newsletters.

7. Publicise your news in offline materials

Reference and cross-promote your email newsletter in your leaflets, local visits and meetings. At worst you'll get credit for being hardworking, at best you'll get extra subscribers.

Tom Brake Snow email